Gold Star Park is a small park in the city of Wetumpka featuring an excellently designed and executed walking trail with very good birding right along the Coosa River. The trail encompasses a surprising variety of habitats ' forest, riverbank, and several elevated sections that lead through excellent bird habitat. White-breasted Nuthatches, Tufted Titmouse, Carolina Chickadees and several varieties of woodpecker are to be expected in this city park. But Belted Kingfishers fish along the banks and migrants filter through each spring and fall as well.

Wetumpka, Alabama sits right on the bull's eye of one of the greatest natural disasters in Alabama's history. The hills just east of downtown are the eroded remains of a five-mile-wide impact crater that was blasted into the bedrock near the end of the 'Age of Dinosaurs,' about 84.4 million years ago. All around the semi-circular pattern of hills that make up the remaining rim of the crater, the hard rocks of the Piedmont are bent sharply and point away from the center of the impact. The normally horizontal layers of more recent surface rocks are mixed in and around the crater suggesting an incredible explosion that would have destroyed all life in a radius of many miles. Parts of the impact crater can be viewed from the walking trails in Gold Star Park.

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Gold Star Park is not employed by or affiliated with the Land Conservation Assistance Network, and the Network does not certify or guarantee their services. The reader must perform their own due diligence and use their own judgment in the selection of any professional.

Listed in:

• Ecotourism